STATE POMOIvOGICAL SOCIETY. 83 



Can they grade them better than you can? Can they hold them 

 better than you can? Now when the time comes for shipping, 

 what do they do ? When they want to take out a hundred bar- 

 rels of Spies out of that cold storage, they go into the cold stor- 

 age, and if they shake a little, they take one barrel, plug it a little, 

 squeeze it down and it goes onto the train. Now a farmer up 

 in Maine, with the kind of apples that the gentleman has spoken 

 of, if he is dealing entirely with his own apples ; he has them in 

 his storehouse; he repacks them — or doesn't repack them, they 

 never have been packed — he grades and packs them in Fc'-rua^y 

 perhaps, or March, and the next week after they are packed they 

 are being consumed in Boston or New York or some othc^ 

 market. There are no rotten apples down there squeezed in 

 together to make the barrel appear tight. They are just what 

 the market wants. And how long before — if this package is 

 properly marked — how long before he has a reputation upon his 

 apples in the market, whatever mark he uses ? 



Now take the conditions of the trade today, this year, when 

 they want all the barrels of apples they can get, and what do 

 they do ? Are they particular, the buyers, to hold up the stand- 

 ard of Maine apples? I hope it is not in Maine as it is in 

 Vermont, but I can illustrate by the actual facts in my own 

 neighborhood. One of my neighbors sold his orchard for $600 

 — it was a small orchard — just as it was ; didn't have to touch 

 them excepting to haul the barrels from the station and to haul 

 the apples to the station — didn't make no difference whether 

 No. IS or No. 2s. Every barrel they had were No. is — almost 

 all the barrels in that lot — they put in everything there was in 

 the orchard, — windfalls, wormy apples, drops and everything. 

 But they were faced with good apples, faced on both ends with 

 good apples. Has it helped the reputation of that county to 

 have such apples as that go to market? Customers know they 

 came from the Champlain Valley, because they bring a bigger 

 price because of the reputation of the Champlain Valley apples. 

 Another man sold his orchard for $500 in the same way. 

 Another sold his apples for $3 a barrel, and they did all the 

 work and even hired the man that owned the apples to oversee 

 the crew; and they put in everything into those barrels that 



